UK – Ireland – Irish Press

Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy were killed on the orders of a Chicago Mafia moss, a new book claims. Eoghan Corry on the latest helping of JFK conspiracy theory.

With the American predeliction for a good conspiracy theory, the romanticism of a young president’s unfinished business, the lure of America’s Royal family, and the mystique that surrounds the CIA and the Mob, the saga of John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s assassination has all the ingredients for a major industry. It has all spawned enough books to a five-story book repository of its own.

The mob angle in particular offers a lot of potential. All of the conspiracy theorists seems to agree the mob was involved. But how involved? Chicago Godfather Sam Mooney Giancana, who was gunned down in 1975, apparently let his younger brother Chuck in on some of his secrets. Chuck and his own son, Sam Junior, have been piecing the story together to tell the role that the Giancanas played in the death of JFK. By throwing in Bobby and Marilyn Monroe as well, they seem to be on to a winner.

According to the Giancanas, Sam was liked to Joe Kennedy when John F was first squaring up for the Presidency. To stop New York mob boss Frank Costello putting a contract out on Joe over a property disagreement, Kennedy offered “a guy on the inside. Isn’t that we wanted all along.”

Sam had the contract called off, and Kennedy met three more times to organize crucial votes in Illinois.

“He wouldn’t be in the White House except for me,” Giancana boasted. He expected that a blind eye would be turned on his racketeering operations.

On July 12, 1961, the FBI began to harass Sam, and it was evident the deal was off. Bobby Kennedy called on the FBI to “get rid of that guinea greaseball, that dago scum Sam Giancana.”

Sam had a solution to Bobby, he would frame the President’s brother for the killing of Marilyn Monroe.

The Mafia and the CIA worked together to exploit Marilyn. They used her as bait to compromise world leaders in the Middle East and Asia. Sam knew that JFK had been romantically involved with Monroe since 960, and Bobby had been involved with her since March 1962. She admitted she was falling in love with Bobby, but when bother her career and her relationship became endangered by her drug addiction in 1962, she threatened to “blow the lid off the whole thing.” The CIA asked Sam to have Marilyn eliminated.

Sam set up an elaborate trap to lure Bobby into Marilyn’s California home, sent four professional hit men over to murder her by inserting a Nembutal suppository laed with lethal dose of sedatives. Thus there would be no sign of struggle, nothing in the stomach to pump out. And it would emerge that Bobby had been in the room just hours before her death.

He had not counted on the lengths Bobby would go to cover it up. He instructed a detective to sweep the house before the authorities arrived. There was no evidence that he had ever been there. The world was told that she had committed suicide by taking an overdose of barbiturates.

Foiled this time, Giancana ordered his hit men to “get Kennedy” and ordered outfit man in Dallas, Jack Ruby to cover it up by killing Oswald. Ruby had been Sam’s man in Dallas for years, running strip joints, gambling rackets, and narcotics, and running guns and planning such operations as the Bay of Pigs invasion for the CIA.

Sam told Chuck on day in 1966. “The CIA and I have been partners on more deals than I have time to tell you. We took care of Kennedy together.”

He told how each man in the Kennedy assassination had got £50,000, how Oswald served as a double-agent linked both to mob and CIA.

He also claimed that Vice-President, Lyndon Johnson knew about the plot and top Dallas police were involved in planning the operation. They made sure it was so loose down there on the day of the hit, hell, a four-year-old could have nailed Jack Kennedy.”

Sam brought in Richard Cain, Chuckie Nicoletti, and Milwaukee Phil for the hit. Can was the man who shot, not Oswald.

According to Sam: “The hit in Dallas was just like any other operation we’d worked in the past… we’d overthrown other governments in other countries plenty of times before. This time we just did it in our own backyard.”

The problem with Sam Giancanaa’s story is that it sounds too corny in places. The best conspiracy theories have to be difficult to disprove. With all the principal characters in this drama dead, the Giancana’s are on to a winner. Maybe it should be placed in a section between ‘Non-fiction,’ and ‘Fiction,’ called in Scottish legal-speak ‘Not Proven’ or even ‘Highly Implausible.’

Double Cross: The Story of the Man Who Controlled America by Sam and Chuck Giancana with Bettina Giancana is published by Macdonald at £16.99 sterling.

About Double Cross

A page turner that’s both hard-hitting and entertaining, Double Cross pulls no punches. Containing more inside information and explosive revelations than any Mafia book yet written, Double Cross serves up a shocking look at organized crime’s influence on politics, entertainment and business – both in the U.S. and abroad.